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Good political speeches are seductive, and yesterday Tim Farron made a good speech. Coherent, passionate, with quite a lot of policy. It had quite a long section on housing.
He started by saying his interest was sparked by seeing ‘Cathy Come Home’ as a repeat 18 years after it came out (I saw it age 16 on original broadcast, and it certainly had a life-long effect on me). He said that he sees ‘Cathys’ in his surgery very week – ‘People in housing need, desperate for a home, desperate to be settled, desperate for dignity’.
He made the basic case for good homes in an effective way: ‘Access to affordable housing affects us all because it is the entry ticket to society, to security and stability, to work, health and community. Because without secure, affordable and stable housing how can you be sure that you can send your kids to the same school one term after the next? How can you be confident you can keep your children safe and warm? How can you apply for and hold down a job to feed and clothe them? And how can you have the peace of mind to concentrate on anything else? The worry and the burden of not knowing if you can pay the mortgage, pay the rent, stay in the same place for more than six months at a time, is devastating to millions and millions of British people.’
His policies included building 300,000 homes a year, letting councils build again, 10 new garden cities, and a housing investment bank. He promised to lead the opposition to the forced sell-off of housing association properties.
So far so good. But there was one sentence that he probably should not have uttered. He said: ‘We have had enough empty rhetoric on housing. We need action now.’
Empty rhetoric. I have commented before on Red Brick that if you only look at paper policies, the LibDems housing policy has been the best. As a party they have had a good progressive comprehensive policy for many years. I wish it had been Labour Party policy, and have had the wishful thought that the two parties should work together on housing. But the past policy and Farron’s speech are all empty rhetoric. Because they have been in Government for five years and they had the chance to follow their principles and to pursue their policies.
No LibDem that I have heard has attempted to explain or rationalise what contribution they made to housing policy under the Coalition. What happened was virtually the opposite of their policy. They supported every decision to undermine and move towards ending social rented housing. The backed demand subsidies for home ownership when the system was crying out for aggressive supply-side action. They failed to take action on private renting. They supported the caps and benefit policies that make it impossible for people on low incomes to live in areas of the country with high rents. They pretended that the ‘affordable rent’ product was affordable when everyone knew it wasn’t. And on and on.
A succession of weak LibDem junior housing ministers looked feeble and ineffectual, and they were. At DWP, LibDem Steve Webb looked and sounded competent but proved to be just a nicer version of his boss, Iain Duncan Smith.
A new leader makes a good speech, but the fundamental truth hasn’t changed. Farron should be forced to explain to Cathy why his party supported the extreme act of watering down of the homelessness safety net – because everything he said about homelessness is true. His phrase ‘empty rhetoric’ sums it up.
In housing and probably many other areas as well, the LibDems cannot now be allowed to move from the moral cess-pit to the moral high ground without serious challenge.

Think of a number. Announce it on a TV programme with a fanfare. Realise it is a hostage to fortune. Then hope that in a few years’ time no-one will remember that it was ever said. So it seems with Housing Minister Brandon Lewis’s newly-announced success measure for housebuilding – One million homes by the end of this Parliament (in England).
Whatever happens, Lewis has made a rod for his own back. One million new homes by 2020 is unachievable from where we are now. He told BBC’s Inside Out: “By the end of this parliament, success I think would mean that we have seen a build in total of something like a million homes.” He may think he has ambiguity on his side, but his use of words implies that the homes will be built, that is, completed and ready for occupation by 2020. Lewis knows the confusion that can be achieved by switching between ‘starts’ and ‘completions’. If he means completions, and the context suggest he does, then the homes have to be started much earlier as it take anything between one and 3 years, and sometimes more, to get a house ‘built’ from start to completion.
To put his statement in context, Labour, with the detailed work of the Lyons Commission behind them, only committed at the general election to reach 200,000 a year by 2020, not in every year up to then.
Lewis’s pursuit of one million homes hasn’t got off to a good start, as the Government’s own quarterly housing statistics show. Very broadly speaking, up until the global financial crisis, housing starts and completions hovered between the 160,000 and 200,000 a year marks. The credit crisis and the recession led to a collapse, from which the recovery has been very slow, with some doubting that it would ever get back to the historic trend figure.
In the latest quarter, (June, July, August), housing starts were estimated at 33,280, 14% down on the previous quarter and 6% down on the same quarter in the previous year. By sector, starts by private sector companies declined 12% from the previous quarter and housing associations by 23%. In a single quarter, Lewis fell 17,000 homes behind his success measure.
The best broad conclusion that can be made is that the figure is stuck somewhere around 140,000 a year, with considerable variation between quarters. Unless there is a dramatic change, output is therefore nowhere near sufficient to reach 1,000,000 by 2020. And it must be mentioned that even 200,000 a year is nowhere near enough – 240,000 a year is the most commonly-quoted estimate of the minimum that is needed. So, the target is nowhere near high enough and performance is nowhere near the target. And after 5 years out of Government, Labour can no longer be blamed.
The Government has already tried many things to up the number, including changing the planning system and bringing in huge demand subsidies. But the fundamentals have not changed. The output of the private sector has been remarkable consistent over many decades. Their aim is to maximise profits not to meet social goals by building as many homes as possible. Housing associations, despite the hype, have also been fairly consistent in output, with ‘affordable rent’ (ie high rent) replacing social rent as grant has been removed. Councils continue to produce new homes at tiny levels.
Lewis has to come up with some dramatic new ideas if he is to get anywhere near his figure. Long term policies like New Towns will have little impact before 2020. It may be that private sector output can be edged up by policy, but nowhere near enough. His only hope is to turn away from the ideology that homes have to be built for private ownership (to rent or to buy).
The public sector and the quasi-public sector could lead the charge. Councils have land and many have the willingness to build – an early decision to offer grant for new homes could produce a few thousand more homes a year. Similarly, housing associations could produce significantly more, especially where they work in real partnership with local councils. Lewis and his boss, David Cameron, would seem to prefer to lecture housing associations about their performance rather than to help them produce more homes: recent policies, notably the reduction in rental income, have threatened housing association programmes and made them more wary about committing to new schemes.
Building homes necessitates borrowing. Housing associations are able to borrow and councils could be enabled to borrow more. But the viability of new schemes depends either on high rents, which push up the requirement for housing benefit, or an element of subsidy in the form of grant. The Tories cut grant by 60% in their first year of Government. In my view the only serious hope of achieving a step change in housebuilding would be to reverse this decision.
If Lewis is avoid looking like a complete fool, he will have to secure a relaxation of borrowing and an increase in grant from the imminent spending review. Neither is likely, and so my money is going on Lewis looking the fool.
 
*Bob Dylan lyric, track ‘God Knows’, album ‘Under the Blue Sky’ 1990.
God knows it’s terrifying
God sees it all unfold
There’s a million reasons for you to be crying
You been so bold and so cold

John Healey is back on the front bench as shadow cabinet minister for housing and has immediately promised to hold the government to account ‘week in, week, out’. Here are some of the arguments that he might deploy.
First, he may well have wrong-footed ministers this week by calling for more action on homeownership, and he was right to judge that this is one of their weak points. It’s also one where he can focus on young people and the barriers to their housing aspirations – the main one being their needing an average deposit equal to 76% of their income (or 126% in London). When John Healey left the housing ministry after the previous election, Britain was still recovering from recession yet 59% of private renters expected to buy a home soon, with 16% having considered applying for a mortgage. With economic recovery supposedly assured, these official figures have got worse not better (56% and 10%). Now half a million fewer households are buying with a mortgage than in 2010. Yet all this is despite the coalition and the new government throwing more than twice as much money at the private market as is being invested in affordable housing.
Second, it’s not as if their investment of over £50 billion in grants, loans and guarantees has boosted housing output. Under the Labour government, housebuilding averaged over 145,000 per year, including the worst years of the recession. The coalition managed an average of 114,000. Labour’s achievement of 170,000 completions in the year before they were hit by the economic crisis now looks like a giddy aspiration under the Conservatives. The coalition plan, Laying the Foundations, was so unsuccessful that one of the new government’s first tasks was Fixing the Foundations. The Tories’ reappointed minister Brandon Lewis wasn’t even responsible for the new policy – it came out of the Treasury. Healey can rightly point to Labour’s much more substantive Lyons Review as a document which sets a target for housebuilding and how to achieve it – rather than simply taking an axe to any regulations that builders find inconvenient, committing irresponsible amounts in financial guarantees, flogging off public sector assets cheaply and hoping that developers will prioritise investment in new housing rather than feeding their ever-growing profits.
Third, Healey will need no urging to bring the focus firmly back onto the costs of renting and the escalating benefits bill. Here he can quote the government’s own social mobility commission as pointing out that housing costs have dragged families with 1.4 million children into poverty over the last five years. In concentrating their action on curbing benefits costs, not only has the government failed on its own terms as costs have continued to rise but the numbers with unaffordable proportions of their income devoted to housing have increased even faster. As with new housebuilding, it’s hardly surprising that private landlords put profits first. Jeremy Corbyn has called not only for limits on rent increases but for rents to be brought down in regions where they are well out of line with incomes. Despite inevitable threats from landlords, this could be an attractive policy package if it can developed in detailed and turned into a robust plan.
Fourth, producing more genuinely affordable rented housing is already one of Healey’s known priorities and he is bound to find Shadow Chancellor McDonnell more flexible in his attitude towards the extra borrowing that will be required. The economic case has been made by Healey himself, strengthened by the recent report for SHOUT. Healey can point to his own track record here – the self-financing settlement that he announced for council housing prior to the May 2010 election, if it had been adopted by his successor, would have provided far higher numbers of new houses than are now being built.
The availability of social rented housing will be a crucial issue in the first major test for the new shadow team – fighting the forthcoming housing bill. John Healey will need a coherent alternative to the Tory package of extending right to buy, selling off high-value council houses, charging better-off tenants higher rents and cutting social landlords’ income. On the last of these, my sense is that he will be on firmer ground if he concedes that social rents have increased too fast, since that would be consistent with his broader argument about why the benefits bill is increasing. But of course the government plans to do nothing to fill the investment gap, even though it is spinning a line that selling off the stock will allow more building.
While the case it made when it published its manifesto in April was extremely weak, civil servants will have had time to strengthen it. Instead of high-value sales funding two lots of replacements, paying off debt and even financing brownfield regeneration sites, we might expect a pared-down scheme, perhaps promising less than one-for-one replacement of the sold-off stock. Healey will need to be ready to expose the injustice of helping fewer than 150,000 tenants become homeowners while closing off the future options for many more who are currently renting privately. Yes, with the help of a hefty government subsidy a bunch of tenants will become owners, but half the properties sold will soon be bought by landlords and they’ll join the landlord bonanza created by selling off vacant council houses. And this from a government which boasts its credibility in managing the public finances and in curbing the cost of welfare.
If Jeremy Corbyn has brought young people back into the Labour fold then John Healey has an excellent chance to put forward policies which reflect their priorities and not those of some older Tory voters. A huge generational gap has opened up in housing. This extends from the half of those approaching their 40^th birthday who can’t afford to be homeowners (as the Daily Mail complains), to the one-third of private renters who are now families with children, to the 275,000 households now facing homelessness and the 7,600 already sleeping rough on London streets. For the moment the Tories may be judged by the electorate to be better managers of the economy, but on housing their reputation is in tatters and it’s Labour’s job to make sure the public sees that too.

It was a nice surprise, almost shockingly so, when Jeremy Corbyn’s acceptance speech on Saturday featured a major reference to housing, and particularly the importance of housing in the campaign for London.

We are going to be campaigning on the crucial issue of housing in London. I am fed up with the social cleansing of London by this Tory Government and its policies. We need a Labour mayor in London who can ensure we do house everyone, we do end the sky high rents we do end the insecurity of those living in the private rented sector. End the scourge of homelessness, we are strong enough and big enough to do that.

Red Brick was delighted to publish a long piece from Jeremy on housing during the Leadership campaign – gaining the highest readership of any single post in the 5-year history of the blog – in which he gave very full answers to questions posed by the London Labour Housing Group, covering issues such as new housebuilding, affordable housing, private tenants, homelessness, and more. The full piece can be read here.
At his first Parliamentary Labour Party meeting last night, Jeremy identified 3 key priorities for his leadership. The first he mentioned was housing.
The importance Jeremy attaches to housing has been reinforced by the appointment yesterday of John Healey MP to become the shadow housing and planning minister, with a seat in the shadow cabinet. (Good profile on Inside Housing here)
This is good news for several reasons. First John already has the experience of being Housing Minister, and was widely accepted to have done a good job: in a short stint just before the 2010 election he got some affordable houses built, was the person who finally grappled with the issue of housing revenue account reform after years of dithering, and developed a serious agenda of private rented sector reform. Second, he has encouraged a lot of housing debate in the period since 2010, including being instrumental in the setting up of the SHOUT campaign for social rented housing. He has also done some serious and detailed work to make the ‘benefits to bricks’ slogan a workable policy with the potential to transform housing in this country. And third, he will bring some energy to Labour’s front bench on housing after a very lacklustre period, offering trenchant but clever opposition to the latest dreadful Tory policies.
The combination of Jeremy Corbyn, John Healey and Sadiq Khan as London mayoral candidate gives housing a profile in the Labour Party that it has not had for many years. There is a huge agenda of issues to grapple with, which Red Brick will cover more in the coming period.

Crucially, it has been hard to make the case for housing investment in the context of a Labour Party policy committed to an austerity programme and no additional borrowing. The combination of Corbyn’s economics and Healey’s detailed knowledge, especially of housing finance, could be hugely important.

Tory housing policies are now about as extreme as they could be. A new and credible Labour policy, building on the work already done, could mean that this is a genuine turning point.

Continuing our series of contributions from Labour Party Leader and Deputy leader contenders, here are the views of Stella Creasy MP in response to the series of questions posed by London Labour Housing Group.
Stella Creasy MP writes in response to LLHG’s key questions on housing.
Resolving Britain’s housing crisis should be Labour’s top priority for the years ahead. It is not by accident that housing is a priority in Wales, but because they have a Labour Government. Yet we do not have to wait until an election to show how we would ensure everyone in Britain has a decent roof above their head – we can start now by highlighting how Labour would address these issues and challenging the government to support us. I’m standing to be Deputy Leader to help Labour once again become a movement that can win these arguments – and so show why we should be returned to office in 2020.
To tackle Britain’s housing crisis means acting not just on social housing, but the private rented sector and home ownership too. It is startling to note that 2015 was the year more buy to let mortgages than first time buyer mortgages were issued. With the average age at which anyone gets on the housing ladder now 37, millions of people struggling to keep up with rising rents and long waiting lists for social housing we need to recognise the interconnected nature of these challenges. When it comes to keeping a roof over your head, Labour should not let this government set one sector against the other, or generation against generation, but instead act to ensure every citizen can access affordable and quality housing.
The inequalities housing access can generate, and the damage this does to whole areas is why we have been campaigning on these issues in my local community for the last two years. We see first hand the damage this government’s policies are doing, as residents cannot afford to stay in our community or get into debt trying to avoid homelessness. That is why we launched our own campaign to take on the agents who were exploiting housing pressures and why I supported my council as they introduced a landlord licencing scheme. But this isn’t just a London matter – we are seeing the same problems across the country.
In reforming the private rented sector there is much to be done. I was proud to work closely with Emma Reynolds MP to put forward proposals through the Consumer Rights Bill to tackle rip off practices of letting and estate agents, as well as ensure longer tenancies and housing standards are upheld. Together we defeated ‘double charging’ whereby estate agents were charging a fee to buyers of properties as well as sellers and ensured the government introduced transparency of fees for tenants. However, the opposition of the government to real reform of the private rented sector shows why Labour must lead the way.
Labour should continue to champion abolishing fees for tenants as a matter of contract law – given it creates a conflict of interest for agents to act for both tenants and landlords on the same property – as well as measures to introduce longer tenancies and higher housing standards, including licensing of properties. There are many different ways to do this. I would like to encourage local councils to set up landlord co-operatives to bypass agent fees in return for longer tenancy agreements with social tenants and guaranteed occupancy rates. Labour could also champion a change in buy to let mortgages to enable longer tenancies to be offered by those with such agreements.
Above all, Britain needs more housing stock and to fund this so that local authorities can build the properties they so desperately need. As LHG argue, we need to both review the HRA borrowing cap, and introduce new forms of finance into housing development. The pensions bond issued by this government in 2015 raised more in one year than they spent on social housing in the last parliament. That is why I have proposed using a pensions bond to enable those who are investing in property to invest in providing this for the next generation, and to do so in a way that gives local authorities the opportunity to build. This would give security of funding to bond investors, local councils and future home owners alike. It would also help support those local councils doing innovative work to address the housing crisis in their communities like Southwark utilising vacant or underused sites for 11,000 new council houses, Manchester City Council forging new partnerships to boost investment and Oldham employing co-operative principles to allow collective ownership of property developments.
Providing the funds to build social housing is only half the battle – the lack of social housing in the Walthamstow Dog Track development put forward by London and Quadrant reflects the wider challenge in ensuring that whatever funding is generated for housing helps address the housing needs of all, not just the interests of developers. The definition of affordable is unclear and led by reference to market rents, not household incomes – this needs to change. So too planning legislation should be used to ensure not just a net reduction in social rented properties but also its provision alongside affordable properties for rent and shared ownership. Building homes for rent, ownership and shared schemes should not be seen as different ambitions but all part of the same challenge.
As part of this process, reviewing how Right to Buy is enacted is key – Labour should support the principle of Right to Buy so that those on the lowest incomes have the same chance of home ownership as others. However, we should not support its current execution by the Tories where this has been at the expense of replenishing the supply of properties. The lack of house building and the further squeeze on properties created by the government proposals around extending this to housing association properties will only further exacerbate the housing problems many face. There is no evidence the government has any policies to address this and increase housing stock, and until they do Labour should resist any moves to decrease the provision of social housing stock.
So too we should also challenge the decision to cut social rents without investing in further development given the evidence that this will lead to a reduction in properties being built. Instead of weakening housing associations as this government is doing in these ways, Labour should be charging them along with councils with the responsibility to increase housing stock. To help do this not only should we rethink the HRA cap as set out above, we should also give greater powers to local and regional government to drive the location and nature of house building- helping local communities decide for themselves how best to use land, whether currently greenbelt or commercially zoned. However, we should seek legislation to clarify that any permission to build should come with a clear timetable to prevent land banking and delay.
Finally, the LHG questions also raise concerns about homelessness and the rules currently in place. As well as restoring the rights of vulnerable groups to provision, I believe it should be a statutory requirement for all local authorities to provide independent housing advice to residents. I also would campaign for the rent a room tax relief to be both raised and directly linked to single homelessness and housing benefit receipt to open up a new source of property to this group.
There are many different ways Labour can fight for housing to be a national priority – but we must be clear that we are offering more than anger over the failure of this government to act. We must provide answers which reflect our values and our vision of the way in which housing problems can be solved for every community.
This requires speaking up for change throughout the country and asking our activists to help win this argument. That is why during this contest I have been running campaign training sessions around Britain – at every session the provision of housing and addressing these concerns has been a priority raised by Labour activists. To enable them to act on these issues we don’t just need leadership in Westminster but around our country and our communities to make the case for change. I don’t want to be a Deputy Leader in a back office in Westminster but out on the frontline with these grassroots activists offering ideas for how to solve these challenges.
With your help together we can make sure everyone in Britain has a roof above their head and a future to which to look forward.

Below are the responses from Yvette Cooper MP to London Labour Housing Group’s questionnaire to Leader and Deputy Leader candidates on housing.
Britain is only building half of the homes we need annually. What specific measures will you take to increase house building?
When Yvette was housing minster she was the first in years to achieve 200,000 homes a year- and she has talked of the importance of reaching 300,000 homes a year to meet need.
At the election we had a good list of measures to support house building and we should not discard the good work of the Lyons review. But we need to be more ambitious. So we should be looking at ways to prioritise support for councils and housing associations to build housing. Yvette as housing minister set in train the Eco-towns programme which has completely run into the ground since. We should be returning to that kind of ambition with new towns and urban extensions. And we will need comprehensive reform on planning and on the expectations on the Mayor and Boroughs in London on affordable housing.
How would you reform the private rented sector to make it more stable and affordable for tenants? Do you support: a national register of landlords; b. some form of rent regulation?
Yvette does think strong regulation for the Private rented sector is important. We were right to propose some form of rent stability for tenants – and it was ridiculous to attack this as 1970s style rent controls and therefore beyond the pale. There is definitely a need for some kind of register of landlords too. Labour’s support amongst private renters rose sharply at the election – it was one of the things Ed Miliband got very right – a focus on these people who are a large and growing group who wanted more protection from Government and we should continue to speak up for them. We should not simply repeat the offer we had at the last election and should start a conversation with private renters and landlords about how we can be even more ambitious.
Will you support the proposal, backed by former Labour Housing Minister John Healey MP, that we should aim to build 100,000 homes a year for social rent?
John succeeded Yvette as housing minister and was a great housing minister and Yvette is delighted to have his support for this leadership election. Clearly there are always risks in someone who wants to be leader of the opposition promising a specific spending commitment this far from an election. But we have never achieved the kind of level of house building we need without a significantly higher level of house building in the social rented sector, and Yvette has talked of the need for 300,000 homes a year in the UK.
Will you support the removal of the HRA borrowing cap, to allow councils to borrow prudentially for investment in housing?
Yvette believes that the Government has been utterly wrong not to be more flexible in allowing councils to leverage revenues for more house building especially over the last few years when construction sorely needed a boost, interest rates were at record lows and the economic case was unarguable. Clearly councils have the capacity to build more homes and that the HRA cap currently prevents that and that is something that will need to be dealt with if we are going to build the homes we need.
Do you agree that estate regeneration schemes should involve no net reduction in supply of social rented homes?
We need tough requirements on councils and the Mayor to deliver affordable homes – and that should include when estates are regenerated. But we need to be careful not to be too inflexible. Some councils have used regeneration of particular estates to build larger numbers of homes in a different part of the Borough than could be built where the project is happening. Yvette is clear this cannot be an excuse for undermining affordable homes requirements but we shouldn’t be absolutist about it.
Do you support the Right to Buy for council tenants and if so what reforms, if any, would you make to it? Do you support the extension of Right to Buy to Housing Association tenants?
In some circumstances it is right and proper for long term tenants to be able to buy their council homes – but we have to ensure that these are replaced and we need to reform right to buy to ensure that the homes sold are replaced – and that discounts are set at a sensible level that means that the homes can be replaced too.
Yvette is opposed to the extension of Right to Buy to housing associations. The problem with this policy is the Government hasn’t thought it through and can’t deliver. Between 2012 and 2014 there were 2,298 new homes funded by RTB proceeds – 22,899 were sold.The Government are only replacing one in 10 homes. That is a disgrace and makes the policy unworkable. Yvette will oppose this policy. Her plan to build 300 000 more homes will include housing association properties and council homes as well as different housing including homes for the elderly and first time buyers.
Do you support the Chancellor’s decision to cut social rents by 1% per year?
The way the Chancellor announced he would cut rents at the budget was very irresponsible. Clearly affordable rents is important but this is about the Chancellor trying to cut housing benefit costs off the back of housing associations. The OBR confirms it will mean fewer social rented homes are built – and there’s a real risk it will mean the debt of housing associations comes onto balance sheet hitting national debt and undermining housing association’s independence. The real reason for rising Housing Association rents is the Government’s failing affordable rent model – which we must fundamentally review.
Do you support policies to switch resources rapidly from meeting the benefit costs of high rents to investing in new homes at genuinely affordable rents?
When Yvette was housing minster she was the first in years to achieve 200,000 homes a year- and she has talked of the importance of reaching 300,000 homes a year to meet need. We need to get cracking and that will help to get the housing benefit bill down.
Do you agree that affordable housing definition should be based on households not spending more than 30% of net income on housing costs?
Affordable housing should mean affordable and the Government’s definition and affordable housing model means that much of what is called affordable housing is in no way affordable. That needs to change.
Would you relax restrictions on building on the Green Belt?
We need to protect valuable green belt land and ensure that we build the housing we need. We should look at where the balance is right and where it is wrong- but we need to ensure a robust brownfield first approach.
Would you reverse permitted development rights allowing offices, shops, and other employment spaces in dense urban areas to change asset class and be converted into flats without planning permission?
There are clearly changes happening online and to the high street, and to working practices which are changing the nature of the kinds of properties we need in cities. And we do need more housing. But Yvette is worried that the Government’s changes are a blunt instrument that risks economic damage where valuable business and community assets are taken out of use – and substandard housing. So we need to review this policy.
How would you secure more affordable housing contributions from private developers through the planning system? How would you change the current approach to viability?
We need a fundamental look at both affordable housing and planning gain to ensure that we are generating the housing and the infrastructure we need. We need to ensure that there is a robust process to ensure that economic viability is not used as an excuse not to meet developers’ responsibilities for affordable housing or infrastructure.
Would you support devolution to the Greater London Authority and city regions of control over: a. private rented sector regulation; b. Housing Association regulation; c. Right to Buy?
Yvette wants to see greater powers over housing and the rental market for the GLA and Mayor.
Will you commit to restoring the previous Labour Government’s homelessness safety net for priority groups and to improving support for single homeless people?
The last Labour Government virtually eradicated rough sleeping and this has gone backwards under this Government. We need to reverse that and Yvette wants to build on the lessons we learnt from these successful schemes.

London Labour Housing Group sent a housing questionnaire to all of the candidates for Leader and Deputy Leader of the Labour Party. Caroline Flint MP has responded in detail to the questions that we posed, and her response is set out unedited below. We will of course publish any other responses received.
Caroline Flint MP answer LLHG’s key questions on housing.
1. Britain is only building half of the homes we need annually. What specific measures will you take to increase house building?
Since 2010 the government has blamed local councils and the planning system for being a block on new homes being built. While some reform to the planning system to make it faster and less bureaucratic is welcome the government failed to acknowledge that the main block to building homes has been money. Housing Associations are starved of grant money to build affordable homes; councils are held back by the HRA debt cap, first-time buyers can’t save for a deposit and so house builders can’t build homes that people can afford to buy.
This situation is being made worse by the government’s changes to housing policy since the election: the loss of income to councils and HAs reduces their capacity to borrow to finance the building of new homes, the forced sale of voids means that councils have a disincentive to build new council homes if the government will force them to be auctioned off before anyone from the waiting list is able to move in.
A Labour government in 2020 should give councils the power to build homes to meet the needs of local people, it must give security to housing associations to be able to borrow on the private market, at no cost to taxpayers, to build homes for rent and affordable home ownership and we must work with private developers to unleash the tens of thousands of homes which have planning permission but which aren’t being built.
As a Housing Minister I promoted Community Land Trusts, to enable communities, particularly rural, to retain new homes for local people. I promoted new Eco-towns, largely abandoned by the Tories in favour of a small number of “Garden Cities” with lower standards. For urban areas, alongside council/social housing co-operative housing could play a bigger role.
2. How would you reform the private rented sector to make it more stable and affordable for tenants? Do you support:
a. a national register of landlords;
Yes, but it would work most effectively if applied where councils need to resolve problems associated with private rented properties.
I spent my childhood in the private rented sector, but those days of secure tenancies and fair rents has disappeared. Today, the Private Rented Sector is not functioning in the way it should.
At the top end of the market professional renters can’t afford to buy and are stuck renting well into their 30s, faced with an array of charges from letting agents at the start and end of tenancies.
At the other end of the market people are forced into overcrowded, dilapidated and overpriced homes because of the lack of decent social and affordable housing.
40% of the Council homes sold off under Thatcher are now privately rented – not what was envisaged. Many of these now represent some of the homes in the worst condition, with the poorest energy ratings. I would take steps to force landlords to improve the condition and warmth of properties in order to qualify for any housing benefit.
In certain towns and cities in order to stop neighbourhood blight, (landlords creating vacant properties, clustered to drive down prices) councils need to introduce registered landlord schemes and ensure that inspections and neighbourhood monitoring was covered by the costs of such schemes – something not permitted at present.
My main concern is over standards: making sure that landlords aren’t putting tenants lives at risk in unsafe homes, that children have a safe and healthy home and that people aren’t ripped off by either landlords or letting agents. This means a much broader approach to the sector than just an excel spreadsheet with a list of landlords on – we need good, enforceable standards, we need to tackle rip off letting fees that see tenants forced to pay through the nose for basic administration or simply to carry on living in a home where they’ve been for years – and most importantly, we need to get building so that there are enough homes to meet the needs of people in London and across the country without having to rely on the private rented sector to pick up the slack.
b. some form of rent regulation?
One of the problems of the PRS is that it’s made up of lots and lots of small landlords, all of whom have different financial situations. I want people to have certainty about their rent and their family budgets but I don’t think that a blanket policy on all rented homes, applied retrospectively, would necessarily work. Instead we need to look at developing a proper set of standards in the PRS and I support councils, housing associations, and private builders who are now bringing forward private rented schemes with longer term tenancies and rent stability as a way of providing security and certainty to private renters.
3. Will you support the proposal, backed by former Labour Housing Minister John Healey MP, that we should aim to build 100,000 homes a year for social rent?
I support building more social housing – but the scale of the challenge is huge. To get back to the level of building that we need we are going to have to train builders, get a huge supply chain ready, assemble the land to accommodate the homes, get planning permission, get finance and get building. If we’re going to increase the number of homes then we’ve got to free councils to build so that they can meet the needs of their local communities as the people best placed to know what their community needs & make it easier for housing associations to build homes for social rent once again. Our language should emphasise a community offer – how many new homes in their area – and be credible to gain people’s confidence.
4. Will you support the removal of the HRA borrowing cap, to allow councils to borrow prudentially for investment in housing?
Yes – this won’t cost taxpayers a penny and by building more homes not only do we give people the security of a home to call their own but by moving people from the private rented sector into social and affordable homes we reduce their rent and the cost of housing benefit going to private landlords.
5. Do you agree that estate regeneration schemes should involve no net reduction in supply of social rented homes?
Yes, but I also know that many councils have significant numbers of homes that still don’t meet the decent homes standard and that estate regeneration is often the only option for councils who want to make sure that their tenants live in decent homes. The lack of sufficient government grant, the government’s changes to social rent and the HRA cap mean that councils will sometimes have to rebuild rather than refurbish and this should always retain the same number of social rented homes.
6. Do you support the Right to Buy for council tenants and if so what reforms, if any, would you make to it? Do you support the extension of Right to Buy to Housing Association tenants?
The RTB is hugely popular with council tenants and we shouldn’t be afraid of backing people’s aspirations to own their own home and have something to pass on to their children. However, the way that RTB works at the moment is making the Housing Crisis worse. Councils don’t keep the receipts from RTB – and can only use part of it if the receipts only form 30% of the cost of a new build property. Put together with the HRA cap and you’re seeing councils having to hand receipts over to the Treasury, who don’t use them for new council house building. The size of the discount needs to be looked at – and the receipts need to be ring-fenced to councils to use to build new homes so that we can actually make good on the rhetoric of one for one replacement. I’m also open to looking at whether local authorities could be given the a first right of refusal, or buy back option, on RTB properties that are being sold.
For Housing Associations, the position is different – they borrow on the open market, against their rental income. I am therefore concerned about the impact of RTB on the ability of housing associations to borrow money and build new homes. Housing Associations already build significant numbers of homes for shared ownership to give people their first step on the housing ladder and I would like us to work with them on developing a way for tenants to move into shared ownership as a way of being able to affordably buy a home. I would also like to see more support given to rent-to-buy schemes.
7. Will you sign up to LLHG, Unite and the GMB’s joint Our Homes Our London campaign against forcing councils to sell off properties in high values areas?
Yes – while I support council tenants’ rights to buy their own home the forced sell-off is completely different. It means that homes will be sold off on the open market to the highest bidder, meaning that families on the waiting list have to wait even longer for a home. Local authorities, especially in high value areas, should have a right to retain a minimum proportion of properties as social housing, just an they are able to protect housing for elderly residents from enforced sale. The Government policy is a direct assault on council housing in London, and I oppose it.
8. Do you support the Chancellor’s decision to cut social rents by 1% per year?
Everyone wants social rents to be as low as possible, but cutting rents by 1% means that councils and housing associations, who had made plans for investment in their tenants’ homes and to build new homes will have to rip those plans up and start again with significantly less money. If the chancellor is doing it to reduce the housing benefit bill then he’d get better results by leaving rents alone and allowing councils and housing associations to build new affordable homes for people to move into, to pay less rent and claim less housing benefit.
9. Do you support policies to switch resources rapidly from meeting the benefit costs of high rents to investing in new homes at genuinely affordable rents?
Over the last thirty years we’ve seen a dramatic shift away from investment in bricks and mortar, and into housing benefit instead. That’s a deeply inefficient and regressive use of public funds. I would like to see the balance altered, although clearly you can’t switch resources, without leaving significant numbers of people out of pocket. But we need to invest in building more homes and this can be done at no cost to the taxpayer by lifting the HRA cap and supporting housing associations so that more genuinely affordable homes should be built.
10. Do you agree that affordable housing definition should be based on households not spending more than 30% of net income on housing costs?
Affordable housing will mean different things to different people – it’s why it’s so hard to talk about affordable housing, everyone argues about the definition. We need a range of products to meet the wide range of housing demand. We need homes that are affordable to the disabled tenant living on benefits and homes that are affordable to the young professional couple looking to get a foot on the ladder. Artificial numbers and percentages won’t mean much to those people – what will matter is actually building homes to start to address the huge disparity between supply and demand.
In Government, I promoted some of the first shared ownership schemes, providing the security of an affordable home, but a ladder to climb to greater ownership. This approach was particularly important for low income but employed first time buyers.
11. Would you relax restrictions on building on the Green Belt?
I think we should keep protections for green belt. My priority would be to re-introduce the brownfield first policy that the Tories have abandoned.
12. Would you reverse permitted development rights allowing offices, shops, and other employment spaces in dense urban areas to change asset class and be converted into flats without planning permission?
We do have to be careful that employers and businesses don’t lose office space or get forced out by landlords who want residential tenants, taking jobs with them. But I do think we could make much better use of the ‘dead space’ above offices. Putting people back into spaces that are currently redundant could regenerate and enhance communities, provide affordable homes, cut crime rates, create employment and reduce pressure on the built and natural environments.
13. How would you secure more affordable housing contributions from private developers through the planning system? How would you change the current approach to viability?
The government changed viability rules so that a 20% developers’ profit comes before affordable housing. That can’t be right.
We should also end the Tories use of so-called viability reports, which enable developers to undo existing planning requirements to include affordable homes within developments. This discreet Tory policy has lost countless affordable homes and undermined what would have been good viable mixed, tenure developments.
14. Would you support devolution to the Greater London Authority and city regions of control over:
a. private rented sector regulation;
b. Housing Association regulation;
c. Right to Buy?
I think you’ve got to look at everything on a case-by-case basis, with a presumption in favour of devolution. But what you don’t want to see is housing associations being faced with hundreds of different regulatory regimes, all of which basically say the same thing in a slightly different way. And a conversation about devolution to London has to look at the boroughs, who mostly have competency for housing, as well as the Mayor.
15. Will you commit to restoring the previous Labour Government’s homelessness safety net for priority groups and to improving support for single homeless people?
The rise in homelessness and in the number of families in temporary accommodation is a real mark of shame on this government. We need to provide the security and stability of a decent home for all families and get back to reducing homelessness in the way that we did when Labour was in government.
 
We really appreciate Caroline taking the time to complete our survey. We hope that members and supporters find it helpful that we have published it. LLHG can be followed @lhglondon and liked through our Facebook page. LLHG can be contacted via the Chair Tom Copley ([email protected]) or Secretary Steve Hilditch ([email protected]).

One of the issues opened up by the Labour leadership debate is whether and how to boost investment through a new version of quantitative easing. It’s a debate that began in 2012 and to which Red Brick added its voice. Jeremy Corbyn has called for a people’s quantitative easing to be used for infrastructure investment, including housing, while Yvette Cooper has said it would be the wrong time to do it. As in other areas, Corbyn has provoked a lively debate. The FT doesn’t like his policy but has at least looked at it in some detail. (Its assessment concludes with an unfavourable comparison with Venezuela: Corbyn might wish he had that country’s oil revenues, even if they have recently fallen off sharply.)
A form of QE for the people was put forward by three economists in May: their idea is for the Bank of England literally to release money to households. There is a near-precedent for this in the US where tax rebates have been used as an economic stimulus. This isn’t quite what former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke once suggested – dropping money from helicopters – but it isn’t far short.
As Paul Mason points out, Yvette Cooper’s criticism of Corbyn actually included two advantages of the policy: higher inflation and a weaker pound. In a situation where Britain has a worryingly large trade gap (or at least people used to worry about it, before the media decided that the real economic problem was the deficit), a weak pound would be beneficial. And as Mason says, while inflation may also have been regarded historically as a key economic problem, having none of it at all is actually quite problematic: the value of debt doesn’t decline over time, it stays annoyingly at the value at which you incurred it. Given Britain’s sovereign debt and especially its far more serious levels of personal debt, the fact that debt is not being eroded adds to the economic risks.
Mason also says that a low inflation/low interest rate economy deprives governments or central banks of one of their tools – cutting interest rates – which is probably why Mark Carney is so keen on raising them (so they can be cut if things get more difficult). Mason quotes another economist, Stephen King, as saying that after six years of glacially slow recovery the world economy is like the Titanic with no lifeboats: when it hits the inevitable iceberg, what policy instruments will be available? China has created a lifeboat – devaluing its currency – to stimulate growth, and as Mason points out the effects are not unlike those of QE (but may be more effective than the very large but in the end almost toothless QE created by the Bank of England under the coalition government).
This writer is no economist, but it seems to me that Corbynomics has some distinct advantages. In contrast to dropping fivers from a helicopter, it would lead to long-term assets being created, including housing as well as transport infrastructure. Given that we have a clear investment deficit in housing – whether in building new ones or in bringing the existing ones up to the standards we need to achieve in order to tackle fuel poverty and meet our carbon targets – directing QE into this sector appears to make sound economic sense. The argument looks even stronger if you consider that (unlike consumer spending) building houses doesn’t suck in huge imports and is labour-intensive, so it creates UK jobs and has beneficial effects on the wider economy. In fact, the case has just been set out in the excellent report by Capital Economics for SHOUT and the National Federation of ALMOs. It’s true that there may currently be problems of shortages of labour and building materials, but these obstacles have been faced and dealt with in the past.
Perhaps the biggest advantage of Corbynomics is that it takes the argument onto the Tories’ own ground. They’ve successfully convinced much of Britain that the economy is like a household’s finances, and has to be reined in when times are bad. Doing as Osborne wants, aiming to run a budget surplus, might be sound practice when considering family finances but in a national economy will effectively mean there is less money for people to spend themselves. Corbyn’s case that we need to get the economy moving by investing for the future not only makes far greater economic sense, it starts to look like a plausible argument to convince the man and woman in the street and to challenge Osborne’s self-serving homilies.

We have been providing information on the Labour Leadership candidates’ views on housing. Jeremy Corbyn MP replied to a London LHG questionnaire and we published his responses last week. Yesterday we published the housing section of Andy Burnham MP‘s manifesto. We are publishing contributions made to the latest Labour Housing Group newsletter from Yvette Cooper MP (yesterday’s blog) and Liz Kendall MP (below).
We hope this helps members and supporters who put housing high on their list of key issues to make up their mind about who to support.

“The lack of decent, affordable housing is a longstanding challenge that must now be addressed.”

Statement on housing by Liz Kendall

Housing is a huge issue in my constituency and across the country.
For people in their 20s or 30s, the prospect of ever being able to afford to buy their own place seems like a pipe dream, even if they’re working really hard. Many young people are still living at home with their parents or struggling to save for a deposit because of the cost of their monthly rent.
Families face real problems, too. Parents often ask for my help because they’ve got mould or damp in their homes that’s causing breathing problems for their young children, or because of overcrowding, which can make it difficult for children to concentrate.
I’ve also helped countless disabled people and their relatives who have been unfairly hit by the bedroom tax – which we must reverse.
The lack of decent, affordable housing is a longstanding challenge that must now be addressed.
We need to build more homes, but we must also improve the way the private rented sector works. In England, over two million children now live in privately rented accommodation. And the number of families in the private rented sector has a knock on impact on the housing benefit bill.
Nearly five million people rely on housing benefit today, and in the last parliament £95 out of every £100 spent by the government went into housing benefit, with just 5% going to bricks and mortar. The next Labour government must begin to reverse that.
Liz Kendall MP
(first published in the Labour Housing Group newsletter @LabourHousing)

We have been providing information on the Labour Leadership candidates’ views on housing. Jeremy Corbyn MP replied to a London LHG questionnaire and we published his responses last week. Yesterday we published the housing section of Andy Burnham MP‘s manifesto. Today we are publishing contributions made to the latest Labour Housing Group newsletter from Yvette Cooper MP (below) and Liz Kendall MP (to follow in the next post).
We hope this helps members and supporters who put housing high on their list of key issues to make up their mind about who to support.
 

“We should be building 300,000 new homes a year…..  I have shown I can deliver on housing.”

Statement on housing by Yvette Cooper

Britain needs more houses and it needs them now. Governments have been ducking the issue of housebuilding for too long. Every day that we delay, the crisis just gets worse and worse. It is one of the most serious challenges for Britain’s future and we can’t keep putting our heads in the sand.
Last year net housing supply was a pathetic 136,610. This Government has failed on housebuilding.
When I was Labour Housing Minister, we had the highest annual level of net housing supply in the last thirty years – wih over 207,000 net additions. I can build houses. I want to build on this record. We have to be far more ambitious if Britain is to have the homes that families need.
We should be building 300,000 new homes a year – a bolder plan. It will take ambition, determination and tough decisions. Enough with excuses, we’ve got to drive this through and if you stick at it, you can.
Today too many people are simply priced out of the housing market. Everyone wants a secure and affordable home to put down roots or support their family. We need to have clear plans to help first time buyers. Building more houses is cental to this.
The failure in housebuilding is holding back our economy, undermining communities and family life – we need a much bolder plan. I have shown I can deliver on housing.
Yvette Cooper MP
(first published in the Labour Housing Group newsletter @LabourHousing)